On the beat, with the public

I work as a police officer in Worcester. I’m not allowed to use sexist terms like policewoman anymore. Some people do call me a police lady, but I don’t take offence. I don’t take offence easily.

I’m in my late-thirties and have two children. By and large, my children like the fact that I’m a police officer. Their biggest interests are things like whether I’ve arrested anyone, whether we’ve got into any fights that day. And can I show them a particular hold? Can I take so-and-so to the ground? Will I do that pressure point thing on one of their mates? They’re quite proud of the fact that I’m a police officer. And my husband loves it. But he worries, and he can’t sleep when I’m on nights. He doesn’t like me being on nights, which is really sad because it’s the best time. There’s a lot of action and very little paperwork.

The joy of public service

It’s a thrill coming to work. You get up and you just don’t know what’s going to happen that day. Sometimes you can achieve so much, just by saying the right thing, or being there for someone, or even not saying anything. You need to read the situation and support the public. You can really make a big difference to people’s lives.

I believe in public service. To the right individual it can give a lot of pleasure. If I have to deal with a drunk in the street, I try to strike up a rapport and talk them round. That makes me feel like I’ve achieved quite a lot. I haven’t detracted from their lifestyle - they’re still able to be drunk within Worcester. But if there’s a drunk who’s being abusive, swearing and vomiting, it really detracts from the town for a great number of people.

You can’t do everything. But the small things are often the straw that breaks the camel’s back for some members of the public. Part of my job is to build a better place for people to live. It’s not all dealing with ‘baddies’.

I can understand if some people see the police as being a bit fascist. But we have to work with the public. It’s much better to offer a piece of advice and try and get that member of the public on your side. You still point out that they have committed an offence, but we want their support. We’re only there for them anyway.

Sometimes when I’m walking around town as a civvy, I see some of our regular customers. Most likely they are about to commit a petty crime. We just smile at each other. Even when I’m dealing with offenders, I always try and have a rapport with them. It’s not doing anyone any favours to not deal with them on a friendly basis. Hopefully, I’ll benefit from that rapport. It doesn’t detract from the fact that they are being processed, they are going to court. It’s not negating any of that.

Opinion towards the police is very polarised. You see that every day. There are general themes running through specific age groups. The older generation are much more respectful and courteous, and pleased to have you around. And then you get the juveniles. It really boils down to how the parents have indoctrinated them - whether the police have been used as a frightener - ‘I’m going to call the police if you continue to act like that’ - or whether they’ve been told, ‘This is a person you can rely upon when you’re in danger, go to them when you require safety’. That diversity makes for interesting work. You have to gauge what the prejudice of the person is that you’re dealing with, before you make your move.

But it’s water off a duck’s back when you get a negative attitude. You almost feel sorry for them that they’ve fallen into that way of thinking.

Some of my colleagues have perhaps contributed to it in years past by not thinking before they’ve spoken, or reacting badly under stress. But it’s the police they’re attacking, not me. I don’t take it personally. I can walk about in Worcester not in uniform and no-one reacts that way. The uniform’s great - like a cloak of anonymity. Even police officers react differently to each other when they’re in uniform.

Drugs, prostitution, and the ‘isms’

My husband calls me a rightie sort of person. And I’ve always had very clear views on right and wrong. I’m very uncomfortable with anyone who breaks the law. I’ll have a go at my husband for not wearing his seat belt. He says I’ve always been a police officer by nature, uniform or no uniform.

There are plenty of drugs in Worcester. But I think that wherever you are, 70% of crime is drugs-driven. If you could only find an acceptable way of legalising drugs then you could potentially take away much of the crime. If you took away the profits from dealing, then there would be no great need to commit crime to generate the finance to buy the drugs. So-called ‘petty crime’ makes a lot of difference to people’s lives. A viable method of legalising drugs is possible. The reason people start heroin is because they’re introduced to it by someone who is going to benefit from their addiction. There’d be no need to sign anyone else up to it if there was no money to be made from it. And I know how hard it is for these people to exist without it. They really, really suffer.

It’s the same with prostitution. I’ve never had any issue with it. If that’s a job that someone wants to take on, then they should be allowed to do so - and given the protection and the freedom to do it. I believe it should be legalised.

We occasionally have to deal with cases of racism in Worcester. It’s not a huge problem, or doesn’t appear to be. We take a very strong view on racism, and if any incident has racism in it, we treat it as a racist crime. We are very aware of the ‘institutional racism’ tag that has been lodged on the police. It was an unfair label, because it was a blanket label. I disagree that it’s institutionalised. It’s a bit of a big stick to beat an institution with, although it’s probably had quite a good effect overall.

But with this tag in the back of your mind, you become a bit conscious of treating people unfairly. Whereas with a white European you might feel you’ve got sufficient grounds to conduct a search, you’re almost looking for stronger grounds when stopping someone from an ethnic minority, because you don’t want that racist tag applied to you. But surely stop-searching should reflect the society in which you live? If you’ve got an enormous number of ethnic minorities, or they are predominant, then you would expect them to get the larger proportion of stop-searches within that society anyway. In London, certain areas of the Met. have majority ethnic minorities. It’s all about manipulating statistics.

Communication is the biggest skill that a police officer has to have. This is why it’s a good thing they are bringing more women into the police force. By and large, women will try and talk their way through a situation. They’re not going to resort to force as readily as a male officer. The majority of offenders are male. It’s often easier for a female officer to develop a rapport because they’re not seen as being threatening, whereas a male officer often generates a quite different response from a male offender. It can be aggressive. With a female, they may actually become less aggressive, accepting that since they’ve got to be dealt with by the law, they may as well do it nicely.

I don’t feel discriminated against for my sex. And it’s quite easy to maintain your femininity - I don’t want to be some androgynous thing in uniform. My male colleagues may have the asset of sheer strength or size, but I consider my femininity an asset. And if I can use that to do my job more easily, with less stress for everyone involved, then I will use it, and I do. Occasionally, there’s some sexism within the job. But that’s only natural. I don’t take it personally. Actually, I arrived once with a female colleague at an incident in which two males were fighting in the street, and the reaction of one of the chaps was, ‘That’s a lot of good isn’t it? Fancy sending two girls to sort this out!’ But in fact we were perfectly able to deal with the situation - and perhaps with less violence than our male colleagues. The guy actually apologized later.

The empty rhetoric of government

Most punters would agree on one thing about politicians: they always speak empty rhetoric, delivering verbally what they think the public want to hear. In the police, we have learnt not to listen to politicians until there is either a court order or a change of legislation.

The trouble is that there is always too much knee-jerk legislation. It’s always very difficult to police, and the public resent it. Look at the limitation on people with handguns and people having to get rid of ornamental weapons that they’ve had for years. These people were not and never would be criminals, and they certainly wouldn’t consider dragging their weapons off the wall and harming anyone with them. It was a knee-jerk response. Criminals still get handguns. It hasn’t taken them away from the people that cause problems with them, only the people who enjoy them for a legal, lawful purpose.

We need to return mutual respect to society. This requires a joint effort between parents bringing up children and a culture change within schools and colleges. That would potentially drive down some of the high-spirited crime. People see some crimes as faceless, but they’re not. There is always a victim.

One of the biggest drivers of crime is alcohol. Most of the violence comes through alcohol, and a lot of the criminal damage too. But alcohol is lawful so there’s nothing you can do about it. If the government tried to ban it, they’d be out of office pretty fast.

Change would need a common purpose. People don’t respond well to government directives. But if you changed the culture of government then it could cascade down to other parts of society. Look at Question Time in Parliament. I cannot believe that these people who have been elected are allowed to conduct themselves in that schoolboy slanging-match style of government. They let themselves down badly. How that’s ever been allowed to happen over all these years, absolutely astounds me. I believe that culture cascades down. If that is how our leaders are behaving, then surely it’s bound to have an impact on all those below them.

There’s got to be more conversation going on in government. Look at what happens when there’s a huge national crisis - they all pull together. For the first week, the party in control will be handling it and the opposition are openly supportive about the way it is being dealt with. They even come up with a few suggestions of potential improvements. I think that’s the way they should conduct themselves throughout the whole of government. It shouldn’t be just trying to shoot down the opposition all the time. At the end of the day, they are all trying to lead the country in the best way possible, I would’ve thought. So I’m just asking them to conduct themselves as reasonable adults, which doesn’t necessarily mean forming coalitions.

The system itself contributes to this. It’s going to be difficult to create change because there is so much resistance to it. The people who come forward to be Prime Ministers or MPs are of a particular culture, aren’t they? But change is coming, it’s just so much slower than we require it to be.

The problem is that politicians have to have a good enough income so they can survive effectively not earning for a number of years. I don’t think we pay MPs enough. They are in what are said to be the most important jobs in the country, and yet the wages don’t demonstrate that at all. It’s a bit like people within the police. Recruits have fallen, so they’ve lowered the entry standards. How are you going to get quality applicants doing that?

It’s the same with government. We want high calibre people, people who have got fantastic organisational and communication skills, and the ability to network. But how can you get them if you don’t pay them properly? And at the same time you have to try and get someone who reflects the society they live in. Nowadays, the only people who go into politics are the people who can afford to do it.

Overriding personal views

An unpleasant part of my job is having to uphold laws that I don’t feel are right. I’ve got no great hatred of people who smoke cannabis. The only reason I’m uncomfortable with it is that they are breaking the law. Not because I disagree with them smoking cannabis. The law overrides my personal views.

People should be allowed a public voice, but they should conduct themselves as reasonable beings. I don’t believe in employees going on strike. It’s back to conducting yourselves as adults: making compromises, looking for solutions. I identified quite strongly with the farmers and what they were doing. They had been so downtrodden. The average dairy farmer has been effectively wiped out. It’s going to be an enormous loss to community and countryside if they go under. If I’d been there to police it and I was directed to arrest someone, I would have done so. But again, my heart would have been with the person making the protest.

Most of the voters live in cities, but they also want access to the countryside, and they want it to look as they see it now with pretty little patchwork fields and hedges - things like that. But if they drive away the small family farmer, they’re not going to get that. Supermarkets are very, very powerful, but that’s because we allow them to be. As a buying public we search for the cheapest product.

I tend to keep my finger on the pulse about directions in government. I can almost smell a law about to happen. But as a police officer, you can’t really get too caught up with questions of how difficult it’s going to be to apply it, or how much it’s going to conflict with your personal views, because you will always be dealing with things that are going to conflict with your personal views. That’s part of your role. Everyone has their different ideals and different values on things. We are professionals.

I still think people consider the British police force to be the best police force in the world. The force becomes a second family. They’re a community that you feel safe within because once you’re a police officer you are a police officer twenty-four hours a day. However you conduct yourself will reflect on your profession.

At the station if you’re late you get fined cakes. It depends on your level of income for the type of cake. When the sergeant was late he bought cream cakes. We’ve got one lad on shift whose wife stays at home and looks after the children, so he brought doughnuts, which is fair as he doesn’t have a lot of free income. This is quite a good way of working, I think. But you can only apply the cakes rule once or twice.

I like Worcester. It’s ridiculous to apply the Worcester Woman tag. The little bits that I get to know about how they generate policy with their spin-doctors and polling is very sad. The political machine feels very remote. I’m always one to run with what’s working best. In that sense it doesn’t matter whether it’s local or central.

The problem with devolution

I like this country, although I admire the way the Americans tend to promote and enjoy success, and if someone is successful within their midst, they will back them all the way. In this country we shoot people down for being successful and can’t wait to take a sly kick at them. That really upsets me. We’re going to breed a nation of failures if we carry on with that culture.

The fact that we are an island race certainly creates the cocoon of culture. We have less cross-border influences - which would surely help to create change. I like the idea of being more integrated with Europe. Further integration would be really helpful and it is the way things are going. It could drive out a lot of the problems. As long as you’ve got segregated groups then you’ve got people you can put labels on and set against one another. And once you’ve got total integration, who can fight with who?

This is the problem with devolution. I would rather Scotland had stayed, because of the integration factor. I can’t see that in the long-term it’s in their best interests, but perhaps they have to do it to find that out. Alright, it’s quite nice to have an identity, but our country could gain so much from learning from others and being closer to them. Whether it’s far too rosy a picture to win over the majority, I don’t know.

As an individual, it is a culture of sharing and breaking down barriers between individuals that I encourage around me. Little things do a lot of good. Like walking around the streets smiling. OK so you may look a bit of an idiot, but if you can try and walk around with a smile on most of the time, it’s amazing the reaction you can get from people. It’s the stone in the pool effect - the ripples are all the people who go about smiling after they’ve seen you.

There’s nothing that prevented me from being an entrepreneur. But I bet they don’t go off to work as excited as I do, thinking ‘What’s going to happen today?’ People always seem to be encouraged to gripe and whine about all the negatives in life instead of saying, ‘Oh, aren’t you lucky?’ How many people go off to work whistling, in an excited frame of mind? If I have two or three days at home and my family are doing something else, I’m checking my diary thinking, ‘Surely it must be time to go back to work soon’.

The unwieldy beast

I think the internet is brilliant. I care a lot about the accessibility of information. I’d have no problem at all with police activity being open to public scrutiny. The more the better really. It’s like how I feel about the environment. I want to know what the benefits of my recycling are.

Of course the trouble is, the more information about crime we are given, the more people think that society has become completely unsafe. If something happens 500 miles away, it’s on the front page of my morning newspaper. Fifty years ago it wouldn’t have been reported in the next town. My daughter is more at risk from dangerous drivers than isolated mad sexual killers. And the truth is that there are probably no more now than there were in the 1920s when the children were leaping around in the streets all the time.

I’ve got really strong, horrendous views on punishment. I quite like Singapore. They will thrash someone if they deliberately scratch a car or break wing mirrors. In this country, even if you got them in front of a court, the chances of them getting any punitive response are incredibly remote. I know quite a lot of children who would enjoy the kudos of having been arrested and having gone to court with very little penalty at the end of it.

I favour the death penalty. If we’re going to deal with someone in terms of life imprisonment, like Myra Hindley, surely it would have been in everyone’s best interests if she’d been put down thirty years ago. I’m not into inhumane killings, but if you’re going to incarcerate people for the rest of their days, I imagine there are a number of prisoners who would choose to die instead. We won’t allow them to commit suicide. That seems more inhumane to me.

The law is such an unwieldy beast. To be able to interpret it you have to be incredibly intelligent and switched on. The judiciary is about 98% white male and from the top colleges, but you do need people who are from the elite. There’s a lot to be said for wisdom. You will get a human failure rate, but we need people with experience. Clearly if they’re starting to suffer from any degenerative condition because of their age then it’s time to have them removed to a place where they can dribble to their heart’s content.

Most kids steal because they think, ‘Jimmy has a Dreamcast or playstation thing. I haven’t. Why should he have one when I haven’t got one? No-one’s going to buy me one, I’ll go out and get one for myself.’ That pressure is on every child. But you only need one in a hundred who has to commit an offence to alleviate that pressure. The best thing for them is that they’ve been caught. That is the really important message: You’ve tried it, you’ve been caught, and this is where you move away from it.

You can pretty much identify the people you are going to be locking up in ten years time, at the age of ten or twelve. With most kids, once they have visited us, they don’t come back. There are ten-year olds who are really street wise and sixteen-year olds who are nowhere near as cynical as those little devils can be. You can’t blanket judge by saying that if you’re under ten you are below the age of criminal responsibility. It’s as ridiculous as saying there’s a ‘Worcester Woman’!